VentureBeat

Once a year venture capitalist Heidi Roizen and her husband Dave Mohler open up their Woodside villa to host the SD Forum’s Visionary Awards honoring pioneers of Silicon Valley. Each time I attend, I’m mesmerized by the estate and its furnishings, from the Moroccan guest house with its old rifle collection to the Tuscan villa architecture with its zany mix of animal head trophies.

Upon walking up the long driveway into the foyer of the mansion, I was greeted by Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad and met with some of the night’s honorees: tech writer Steven Levy (who just moved from Newsweek to Wired), Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, New Enterprise Associates general partner Forest Baskett, and Diane Greene, founder of VMware. They were the latest to join the Visionary list for the group, which promotes tech entrepreneurship in the valley and has given out the awards for 11 years now.

This was one of those events where the who’s who of Silicon Valley shows up, though gray hair was fashionable since the list included a lot of past visionaries. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed told the crowd they were welcome to set up their innovative companies, particularly cleantech firms, in his town.

Baskett, former chief technology officer at the once-high-flying graphics supercomputer company Silicon Graphics and an ex-Stanford professor who played a big role in getting MIPS Computer Systems and Sun Microsystems off the ground, said he was as enthused as ever about tech in the valley. Cleantech is his latest investing obsession. Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe has taken another step in its plan for domination of the mobile world — it just announced a partnership that should make it easier to create applications for the Adobe Flash runtime in Qualcomm’s BREW mobile software platform.

This partnership is presumably part of Adobe’s Open Screen Project, which was announced in April and is the company’s initiative to make Flash the ubiquitous environment for mobile devices. A big part of that initiative involves deals with mobile partners like Motorola and Nokia to create versions of Flash that run easily on their products. It’s a challenge to make Flash, a demanding runtime environment, work well on a mobile devices — it doesn’t work on the iPhone, for example, and a startup called Skyfire just raised $13 million to tackle the problem from the browser side. But Adobe wants to make Flash as ubiquitous on mobile devices as it is on the web, particularly as Microsoft’s competing product Silverlight is making moves into the mobile market.

Flash Lite, the mobile version of Flash, is already compatible with BREW, but only for a fee as part of the BREW extension program. The new BREW Mobile Platform will integrate Flash Lite into its central client, and it will be available without charge. This should make Flash applications a key feature of the BREW platform moving forward. Chipsets with the new, Flash-integrated platform should start shipping this fall.

Here’s the latest action:

More earnings info — While we wrote earlier about Microsoft’s earnings, plenty of other companies are posting theirs, too. Motorola disclosed that its market share is down to 9.5 percent, while Qualcomm’s profit is up. Amazon’s Q1 profits rose 30 percent, Nintendo profits hit a record high on strong Wii and DS sales, and Juniper Network’s profits leaped 66 percent over last year’s.

Greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating — The rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide has gone from one part per million each year in the 1960s, to 1.5ppm in the 1980s, to 2ppm in 2000. Now emissions appear to have picked up even more sharply, with the latest numbers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing an increase of 2.4ppm last year. Overall levels are rapidly approaching 400ppm; an atmospheric concentration of 450ppm is widely held as a point of serious danger.

Russia looking into Internet censorship — While the Russian media is kept under tight control, Internet access in the country has so far remained unfettered. That may be set to change, as Ars Technica reports.

CNET and Yahoo to ink editorial / ad deal – Yahoo has agreed to run much of CNET’s content on its site, as well as selling remnant advertising from the company, according to Kara Swisher.

Another Twitter engineer flitters away — Lee Mighdoll, a VP of engineering and operations added to the Twitter team back in January, has left the company. That follows the departure of chief architect Blaine Cook, for reasons still not entirely clear. Twitter has come under a lot of criticism this past year for its downtime issues, perhaps having some heads roll will help shore things up. The company also may also be preparing to raise a new Series C round, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

Ooma lowers prices in bid to compete — Ooma, as you’ll recall, is a startup selling $400 units that allow people to make free calls, for life, over a broadband internet connection. Following a rumor from Valleywag that the company is struggling, it has rolled out a new scheme to sell units for $249, with an optional monthly service plan for “enhanced telephony services”.

Google’s $70M restaurant bill — Even for Google’s famous free lunch, somebody pays: The company itself. The bill comes to $70 million, according to the Silicon Alley Insider. My question: Who gets the tip?

Juice Wireless, a company that lets you send photos, videos and other content to your social network pages from your mobile phone, has been on a rocky ride.

Not only does it face plenty of competition, but it changed tack a year ago and laid off some employees when it aborted a separate marketing business. Yet that hasn’t stopped new investors from coughing up $6 million in new cash, led by 21Ventures.

The company’s mobile widget, called Juice Caster, also lets users share selected content with friends, and watch on their own phones through a straightforward interface.

Juice has evolved over the past year, closing its New York headquarters and moving into its Los Angeles offices.

The company and its CEO, Nick Desai, face criticism in the comment sections of blogs covering them. The comments come from a group of people claiming to be former employees, who typically leave several negative reviews below each post. When asked about the comments, Desai told us the company’s retrenchment is responsible, saying, “Maybe there were some hard feelings.”

Yet Qualcomm, also, has expressed confidence in the company, with a strategic investment of $3.3 million in March.

Juice Caster is now offered by the mobile carriers Alltel and Cricket Wireless, as well as two Puerto Rican operators. The company has signed deals with two of the largest U.S. carriers, to be announced within two months, according to Desai. It has also signed a deal with one of the largest handset makers, he said.

It still has plenty of competition. A host of other companies want to corner the market for mobile content, although many of their features differ. We recently covered two companies, Radar and Avot Media, that let mobile users view pictures and video. Seattle-based Treemo, which focuses more on sharing, just raised another $2.55 million from JK&B Capital, while just-launched startup Buzzwire works without a download.

Depending on whether mobile users are open to more than one video application, a more challenging opponent to Juice Wireless might be a video search app like Mywaves, which pulls video to mobiles from various parts of the web.

Mywaves says it has hundreds of thousands of users in 175 countries. Juice Wireless, by contrast, has only reached about 50,000 regular users, split between free (self-installed) and paid (through a carrier plan) customers.

Including this $6 million round, Juice Wireless has taken a total of $18.3 million to date.

Here’s the latest action:
1) Google facing employee overload
2) Verizon Wireless abandons legal challenge of FCC rules
3) Qualcomm comes up with competition for WiMAX
4) Could Yahoo finally be giving up social networking?
5) Google’s PageRank changes injure startups, again
And a handful of fundings:
6) Linkstorm raises $4.2 million from 60 angels
7) JibJab takes a further $3 million from Polaris
8) Zoji receives $1.5 million in seed funding
9) Socialthing raises $300,000 for profile aggregation

Google facing employee overload — Google may be overstocking itself with new employees. Jordan Rohan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, told News.com, “Half the company has been hired in the last 12 months. That’s chaotic. The new employees find it difficult to figure out how to get things done.” Facing an employee glut, Google may not have the corporate expertise to structure the next for their new worker bees.
Simultaneously, Google is undergoing a talent drain, with some of its best and brightest striking out on their own. (The most recent: Salman Ullah.) Even John Doerr, an original Google investor and board member, is worried that the company’s culture may not survive the changes. Larger, more lumbering and less talented by the day: Is Google finally ready to become a regular corporation?

Verizon Wireless abandons legal challenge of FCC spectrum rules — Verizon’s appeal to the courts to force the Federal Communications Commission to abandon the rule structure it set up for the 700mhz wireless spectrum auction has been dropped by the company. It’s unclear why the telecom giant decided to stop trying to force the issue, but it was probably simple a matter of good sense; the courts have historically declined to interfere with the FCC’s authority.
The auctions, set for January 2008, aren’t likely to run into any more obstacles at this point. Verizon had taken issue with the controversial “open access” requirement that will allow any device to work on the network, regardless of who owns it.

Qualcomm may have a better plan for wireless access — The vaunted WiMAX technology that companies like Intel, Motorola and Sprint are pouring money into may face a strong challenger. Qualcomm has announced a new line of chips, called Gobi, that are capable of accessing multiple types of networks — for example, both EV-DO and HSPA.
Building cellular access chips into laptops has long been a problem, because each type of chip can usually only process the signal from one carrier network. (The Gobi probably uses a technology called software radio, which is designed to eliminate the need for multiple chips.) Depending on how much Qualcomm charges, its new chips may be preferable until the more efficient WiMAX networks are fully built out.

Yahoo giving up on social networking? — “I don’t think Yahoo can be Facebook tomorrow. I don’t think we want to be Facebook,” said Jerry Yang to reporters at an advertising conference yesterday. That’s news to everyone who has watched Yahoo torturously modify its failed Yahoo 360 social network into the new Yahoo Mash, which has been compared to Facebook more than any other social networking site it may be trying to emulate.
Mash is still in private beta. The question now is whether Yahoo, under the new leadership of Yang, will drop the me-too project and focus on something that might actually succeed, or try to differentiate itself with some unusual features. (Via the Mercury.)

Google undergoes sweeping change in PageRank algorithms — The search giant periodically changes the automated rules that determine how sites rank in its search results. The latest shift, noticed today by bloggers, will have a serious effect on a number of blog networks and some startups. Major sites affected include Engadget and DownloadSquad; both will likely to lose a large amount of traffic due to their lower ranking. Google’s changes appear to have been made to combat paid links and in-text advertisement.

Linkstorm raises $4.2 million from 60 angel investors — Linkstorm offers a method for turning a single link into multiple links. When a mouse pointer touches the link, it opens up into a interactive box showing subject lines and other links, much like drop-down menus. It also offers a banner tool that expands the size of an advertisement on a mouse roll-over. Both products are marketed to advertisers; several have already been deployed from companies including Hyundai and Cisco. The company’s total funding is up to $13.2 million; Linkstorm had already taken $9 million from 150 individuals, and a few of them re-invested in this third round.  Funding news via VentureWire (subscription required).

JibJab takes a further $3 million from Polaris Ventures — peHUB dug up the funding amount, initially undisclosed in the company’s press release today. Together with the previous round, JibJab has taken about $6.4 million, all from Polaris. The company makes annoying-but-amusing videos and greeting cards (today’s announcement was for new e-cards); to see what we mean, check out Starring You.

Zoji receives $1.5 million in seed funding — Yet another online invitations site wanting to take down Evite, the grandfather of them all. Zoji is betting on a full set of social features, including messaging, chatting and photos; it will also save invitations and event details over time, leaving a sort of event scrapbook behind. Like another site we’ve profiled in the past, MyPunchBowl, Zoji also has a feature for reaching consensus for a date among the invitees.

Socialthing raises $300,000 for yet another social network profile aggregator — Boulder, Colo. based Socialthing, yet to launch publicly, consolidates social networks into a single dashboard. It will let you track contacts, blogs, photos and music across multiple social networks. But there are already a host of other companies that do something very similar, including ProfileBuilder, meeCard, FindMeOn.com, OtherEgo.com, ProfileMat.com. There are also ways to track activities on various networks, using Friendfeed, to stay on top of friends’ activities on various platforms. So we’re not certain why we need another company to do this, but we’ll wait and see. EonBusiness provided the funding, as part of a seed round totaling $500,000.

Battery maker A123 Systems has secured its place as the most heavily funded battery startup, adding $30 million in its fifth round of funding.

Early this year, A123 broke $100 million. The Watertown, Mass. company, which is developing new lithium ion technology, already has some products on the market, mainly batteries for hand-held power tools. More importantly, companies like General Electric are considering its technology for use in upcoming hybrid vehicles.

A123 has shown itself to be rather aggressive, chasing down potential customers and acquiring Hymotion, a related battery tech firm, and with the potential for battery storage technology, it’s no surprise that plenty of firms are ready to invest.

The company didn’t disclose which investor led the round, but aside from a number of well known venture and private equity firms — Sequoia Capital, North Bridge Venture Partners, CMEA Ventures, FA Technology Ventures, OnPoint and Carruth Management — several other large institutions invested, including General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Alliance Capital, Motorola, Qualcomm, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Desh Deshpande, who is the company’s chairman.

Other lithium ion battery companies include San Francisco’s Li*On Cells and Fremont, Calif.’s Mobius Power (see our June coverage). Other battery companies working with lithium ion or some other material include Valence, Saft, EEStor and Infinite Power Solutions.